


shrike

by basementmixtape



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Angst, Boris POV, Canon-Typical Behavior, M/M, Oneshot, Suicidal Thoughts, Underage Drinking, character study ig, i wrote this in like two hours don’t expect it to be Good, kinda sad, mentioned drug use, this is basically just a love letter to the desert and the sky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-13 15:27:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21156833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basementmixtape/pseuds/basementmixtape
Summary: There’s an inherent, exquisite irony to drowning in the desert.





	shrike

**Author's Note:**

> ive never written for this fandom/ship before so they might be ooc but i tried my best, im sorry donna tartt. now, please enjoy my garbage.

The sun baked, cruel emptiness of the Nevada sky was almost mercilessly mocking, it's sharpness echoed in the sound of their laughter, bouncing off the bleached glass that encased their little world. Boris had never loved anything the way he loved the feeling in his chest just then, the spreading, steady warmth bleeding from his lungs like wet ink on thin paper. Theo was beside him, head thrown back, glasses reflecting the empty sky, the mirrored image floating over hollow brown eyes.

He was beautiful in the dust, his dirty mess of wet brown hair, long enough he could tie it back now if he bothered, he had a wildness to him, laying with his pale back pressed to the sandy dirt, his gaze sharp and misted all at once, almost sober today. He was hawkish and strange, a bird of prey, Boris the mouse he was hunting. Every time Theo looked at him, it felt like he was being flayed alive, sliced open and picked apart, the mouse impaled on the thorn, Theo the shrike with his sharp gaze and his careless, drunken touches. He had been different when he first arrived, timid and small, intense darkness coiled inside of him, trapped behind chapped lips, behind peeling skin and shaking hands. He was nearly shy, scared even by drinking beer, by smoking cigarettes.

There was beauty in corruption, in destroying something beautiful, he had taken the seed of a darkened thing and buried it. Theo bloomed under the desert sun into something alien, something dark, painfully human and sad all the way to his bones. If you pulled Theo apart and picked at the strings, if you knew to rend flesh from bone with gentle hands, if you cracked open his knuckles and peered inside, all you would find was sorrow. He reminded him of cold rain, the water on the window, the steady echo of warmth held in by the glass. He felt safe, despite his misery, despite the terrifying nights spent under the burning moonlight, liquor on their lips, hands sliding between them, touches gentle and absolutely annihilating. He felt echos of them, like phantom pains, whispers sweeping through him, Theo had branded him, left marks on his body and his soul.

He curled toward him, back to the white glow of the sun, painfully aware of the beaded water all down Theo's chest, the fine curve of his nose, clinging to his jaw. He was staring up at the empty, bleached sky like it held all the answers, like somehow, every wisp of a cloud held the ghost of an idea, a question for a question. Sometimes Theo's questions were ugly, things about wanting to die, things about how Boris wanted to die, why people had to suffer, why the drugs made it so much easier, hard questions. Now, he was mostly sober, and silent, the brown in his eyes going pale and golden when he turned to meet his persistent stare.

"Why the hell are you staring at me?" He wasn't even all that pretty, if Boris was being honest with himself, he had a strange set to his brows, intense and always a little angry looking, with his sunburned cheeks and his soft jaw, his muddy brown eyes and the hideous glasses, but none of that seemed to matter, because Boris was a field mouse, destined to be impaled by the shrike, over and over and over again.

"You need a wash, Potter, not in pool, in real shower. Steal some of Xandra's shampoos, she will not notice." He let Theo shove him back into the pool, the world going soundless and heavy around him. It was a sharp contrast to everything else about the glass bubble they were trapped in, his water, this steady weight pressing in on him from all sides, Vegas was always light and empty, dry and hot as an oven, here it was blessedly cool, the whisper of chlorine biting at his eyes, the tiles of the pool were white, he could probably blend in, floating here at the bottom, only his hair would give him away, and the stench of him after a week floating face-down. He thought of it often, killing himself, he didn't try like Theo did, but it was a constant companion. It felt like a safety net under the tightrope he was walking. He had control, one swallow, a good high, then nothing at all, or thrashing in the water, blending in with the white tiles, blue lipped and bloated, chlorine painting the tar in his lungs chemical white. His lungs burned, he resurfaced, the dry air pulling at his sunburned skin. He had more freckles now than he ever had before, the sun was heavy on them, full and apathetic, white as flour, white as the sugary stars that mapped the sky. The sky was eternal in Vegas, it was nothing but flat horizons, a bowl overturned above them at night, often Boris imagined what it would be like if gravity switched off, if he fell off the earth like a cliff, plunging into the stars, always alone. He liked to imagine drifting until the atmosphere was thin as paper, then choking on his blood and his lungs, he sometimes tricked himself into thinking it would actually happen, he would actually drift away, staring into the sky like he was staring into the ocean, like he could wade in and drown among the stars.

He floated on his back, staring at the bleached white of the sky, ears still deafened under the still water, his long limbs pale and cool under the bright eye of the sun. He shut his eyes, the pink of his eyelids, the whispering, familiar feeling of his eyelashes tangling together at the corners, the hot air on his skin, dry in his lungs, his sandpaper tongue flicking over his lips. He felt strangely peaceful, he never felt peaceful, he always had chaos boiling inside of him, a frantic, frenetic energy that was impossible to control and even harder to contain. He usually pissed off Theo, just so he would hit him, just so he would put his hands on him again. Every time he touched him it felt like he was being consumed, it felt like his hands were outfitted with little barbs, burrowing in his skin and never coming free.

This boy lived inside of him, hollowed him out with lazy touches and glassy brown eyes, filled him with smoke and kisses like wildfires, the hissing burn of his touch all-consuming, earth shattering. The world could splinter to nothing, dissolve to nothing but white desert sunlight and the dust on Theo’s pale back, and he wouldn’t care, he had him, and he would never let him go.

“Do you ever think about what it’s like to die?” Theo asked him, the hot air curling around his words. He kissed them into the air with cracking lips, a cracking voice, his tongue curving over them, worlds round and smooth, like cursive, like thick black ink, like yellowed paper, like blood. His voice was life giving.

“No.” Boris lied. He lied as easily as he breathed, he knew how to take and take and take, impaled by the shrike, impaled by his own clever hands and bitten tongue. He thought of death more than he thought of life. He felt like he’d been set adrift, like he was some wild, half-feral thing, a creature at the mercy of the desert and the stars, his fate predetermined, his course set for a long abyss and nothing at all. He was futureless, unable and unwilling to do anything but survive, a coyote, a rabid dog, starved and savage as the wind, violent as the rain. He thought of death, and prayed faithlessly to an uncaring God. Theo didn’t need to know these things.

“I think about it all the time,” He said faintly, his bloody voice, hissing past rotting teeth. They had started to decay already, mummified in the dry desert air, soaked in liquor, the sharp, chemical scent of their sweat, changed, reeking of pot and the burnt, awful smell that clung to them now. No one told them about the way drugs make you smell, the way they make you sweat out the poison inside of them. “I think about dying, and I don’t think I’m afraid of it, I think it would feel like coming home. Like going back to how it was before.” He didn’t need to ask what Before was, Theo had told him enough, he had whispered brokenly about his mother, beautiful and strong, with a heart made of fire, a voice soft and warm, a gentle hand, a bloody death. They carried these deaths inside of them, they swam in their blood, in their tarred lungs, the echoing whispers of a dead mother’s touch.

“Death is part of life, nothing can be done, you cannot run into it, you just stay here with me, Potter.” He looked at him again, and immediately regretted it. Theo was staring at him, glasses discarded, eyes honeyed under the seething sunlight, the red burn across his cheeks, his freckling skin, dry now, not a drop of pool water left under his glassy eyes. His voice was layered, perfumed with the fiery heat around them, the burn of vodka on his lips, his cursive voice melding together even more now, his eyes almost unseeing. His breath felt thick, like there was a rubber band around his chest, like he couldn’t get enough air. There was an inherent, exquisite irony to drowning in the desert.

“I think it would be peaceful.” He stared, and it felt like he was staring directly into Boris’s soul, his intense, unwavering gaze too serious, alcohol staining his breath, hands grasping at the dry earth under his hands, ragged nails leaving thin crescents in the dirt. He had marks that mirrored them on his shoulders, some from Kotku, most from Theo. “I think it would be like going to sleep.” He stared at Boris, at his mouth, bitten and bloody and dry as everything else in Nevada. “Maybe I would be able to see her again.”

“She can wait, she will be there for you when it’s your time. You are in no hurry.”

“I always feel like I’m running out of time.” He had never felt the weight of time on him, the desert felt eternal, it felt like it was as ceaseless and unchanging as the sky, like this is what it had looked like when the old gods first touched the earth. It was ancient and knowing, an intelligence hidden under their feet, living and breathing. Still as dead as the ghostly apparitions that haunted them both. The desert was a haunted place, they were ghosts passing through, boys with the entire world unfolding at their feat, futureless and isolated, and so fucking alone. Sometimes it felt like they were all that was left, like an apocalypse had swept through, like they were alone in a huge, barren world. Sometimes Boris wished for it, for them to be left in this desert together, growing old and knotted and strange together under the stars, high as kites with feet that never left the ground.

“Pretend with me, Theo,” He hated that he couldn’t say his name, hated that it came out sharp and barbed as the other boy’s hands, pointed at the wrong edges. _Teh-eo._ He felt a fucking moron. “Is just the two of us, entire world is open to us, what do you want to see before you die?”

“Nothing, the world doesn’t matter to me, Boris, I just want to feel like I’m at peace for once, I want to feel whole again. I feel like I’m caving in, like I’m empty on the inside.” They really were as hollow as the desert, as empty as the sky, boys filled with illicit pleasures, finding comfort in taboo touches, screaming into an apathetic void. Cold fingertips and hot skin, the heat of breath on the back of his neck. He craved touch like Theo craved death, starved of it.

“Come here,” Theo curled around him on the ground, the dirty, chemical smell of him was strangely comforting, he had glue in his hair, from sniffing it the day before. He felt him start to shake, felt him gasp breathlessly against him, feeling the misty warmth of tears on his skin. “Is okay, Potter, let all of it out, death is waiting for you. Maybe we get high and watch stupid American movie, eh?” He just clung tighter, nails cutting into his skin.

His mouth tasted like vodka and salt.

“I love you.”

He didn’t remember it the next day, but, then again, he never remembered touching him. Sometimes he thought he tried to burn it out of his mind. Maybe he was just being paranoid, the hazy nights never seemed to cling to Theo the same way they clung to him. After all, who would bother to remember loving someone like Boris?


End file.
